Oh definitely I hate playing against it. Yeah it's super annoying! Speed Boost/Sword Dance pokemon are staples on Baton Pass. It's easily countered with Pokemon with roar/whirlwind but if they don't have an answer it can get out of hand so fast. Ooh those both sound like good combos! I have Skarmory on almost all my teams whether it's gen 2 or gen 6 or anywhere in between. In gen 6 my general playstyle was a super tanky stalling team that just whittles you down bit by bit. Yeah a few years ago the world championships for Pokemon TCG were held in Vancouver. There was a huge temporary Pikachu statue near Downtown Vancouver!

So this weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada! A weird Thanksgiving tradition some of my family have is to carve pumpkins (even this early in October). This year I did Kylo Ren. Really happy with how it turned out:

I know! It's so well done. Best of luck! Wow, that's a huge scarecrow. Looks awesome and will take up a lot of space on your lawn. I know .

Great to hear! Same for me. I think within the battling Pokemon community it's pretty well known - it's part of Pokemon Smogon which is pretty much *the* place to discuss competitive battling and strategy. The Smogon forum is also a great resource for build ideas and team comps. Toxic spikes is so stupid . There are also some really awful combinations that were so overpowered they had to be banned out of OU. One of my favourites was building a Klefki with the Prankster ability, and Swagger, Thunder Wave, Reflect, and Substitute. Swagger increases your opponent's attack and confuses it, so you basically just keep swaggering your enemy is so strong it just knocks itself thanks to being confused! And between substitute and reflect, your already tanky Klefki takes almost no damage in the small chance (thanks to the thunder wave) that the opponent even gets a hit off. Oh and the Prankster ability means your status-inflicting moves have priority, so you'll pretty much always be able to get off your combo first. There's also baton pass teams where basically most of your pokemon are tanky, equipped with baton pass, and have attack/special attack/speed-boosting abilities. You keep passing your boosted stats off to the next pokemon with baton pass, until your main attacking pokemon gets like 4 times the attack power and just one-shots the entire enemy team.... I'll stop rambling now . Yeah I remember when I would play Gen VI a lot there were some teams I just had absolutely no answer for. Sometimes it's not even about your team, but just being able to predict what your opponent's next move is and making the appropriate answer, always thinking a few moves ahead... Pokemon strategy is surprisingly deep! I'll keep an eye out for you then, who knows, maybe we'll battle soon!

It's so boring around Halloween here, that's for sure . That's definitely one of the best . I think after Steve Carrell left the show the pranks have become more of the staple of the show.

Awesome! Exactly, you can really try any pokemon team you want without having to grind it out, and in doing so you actually learn the game really well. Showdown uses a tier system to try and make things fair, so really overpowered pokemon are placed in the "Uber" tier and the rest of the popular/good but more balanced pokemon are in "OverUsed (OU)" tier (the most popular tier to play). There are other lower tiers for the less popular/good pokemon. If I remember correctly Snorlax is considered the king of OU in gens 2 and 3, maybe more. Most legendaries are usually in Uber (e.g. Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Deoxys). You're probably playing in the OU tier so that's why you've only run into Zapdos. Wobbuffet and Wynaut are the only non-legendaries in Uber, because their ability Shadow Tag combined with their amazing tanking and countering power. You can find the OU gen 3 list here: http://www.smogon.com/dex/rs/formats/ou/. There's also build recommendations on there if you're interested! Well, my username on there is XxCasxX so if you search me up and I'm online, certainly I'm ready to battle! I made a couple gen 3 teams a few days ago though I have no idea if they work well or not. I haven't gotten that far into Doom yet but I think I can see that already .

I'll keep that in mind. I had forgotten about it too until I saw reviews come out for it . I know! October is almost here! I think I'm going to dress up at school on Halloween since it's a Monday. My school has no Halloween spirit so I'll be one of the only people dressed up but I don't care . I made a Squirrel Girl costume for a comicon earlier this year so I'll probably use that. Maybe I'll save the Exorcist and catching up on American story for later in October. I'm really enjoying the Office! Some of the characters have changed a bit, but for the most part are the same. Jim and Dwight's pranking relationship is one of my favourite things about the show. But I don't want to experience that movie again ...

So far I like the additions, but we'll see how it actually works in game. I wonder how the feeding and caring of pokemon will work. Pokemon showdown is a lot of fun! I initially played it to test out different teams and EV's before spending the time in game to catch and train all the pokemon to make my perfect team, but I ended up getting stuck there . Thanks to showdown I now know that Wobbuffet is actually one of the most overpowered pokemon out there... and I always thought he was one of the weakest. That would be fun! I better start putting a team together. That's too bad about Resident Evil. I got Doom 3 finally, and I'm happy to say it's more like original Doom. Not as much psychological horror/dark rooms as Doom 3 but awesome overall.

I thought you were talking about Black Mirror but now that you mention it Atlanta makes a lot more sense . I still have yet to watch it! Been stuck with school work

Darn, I'm sorry to hear that. Wish you enjoyed it more. I wonder what I'll think about it now. Have you watched the Exorcist? I heard decent reviews of the show, but like usual have yet to watch it. I still need to see the new American Horror Story episodes too. Aaaand I'm almost done the Office, in season 8 now, so I want to get that done soon. I looked up the differences between the Ultimate and theatrical cuts, and for sure some of the scenes they added were absolutely necessary for the film making sense. On the other hand many of the smaller additions only made an already super long film even longer. I can't directly compare it to the theatrical version since I didn't see that one, but it looks like the Ultimate Cut was better. Still not good though... I can't imagine how bad the theatrical version must have seemed now that I think of it

I can see it end up happening. There's also Sun and Moon coming in a few months! That's fair. I only know of the newer abilities and pokemon because I played the newer games - I don't stay updated outside of that. Before playing X I really only knew up to 3rd gen too. Have you ever played Pokemon Showdown? You can play online against people and fully customize your team (pokemon with the right ev's, iv's, items, abilities, etc) and also fight using only certain gens. I usually don't have the patience to get that sorted out in game, so it's kind of fun to mess around with it. I'm pretty bad though

I've gotta find someone to go see it with me! Too bad I'm the only one of my friends that likes horror movies . I got my friend to watch the Blair Witch Project with me (after much convincing) and he had to turn it off halfway through. I saw the Director's Cut of BvS and people said it was better than the theatrical release, but that's not saying much. Ahh yes . Yeah no need to dig it up. I haven't seen it past that first time yet.

I don't have many classes this term (thank goodness) so it's going alright so far. Thanks! I'll try .

Yeah! Did they say they were going to release more generations? If so, it's just more pokemon for people to go out and risk their lives to get . Yeah I've heard a lot of stories of people like that. And about people who quit their jobs to collect them all. I like the idea of getting people out and walking around but it's also so risky with people really not paying attention to their surroundings. I would probably play X or Y over Omega Ruby if you get a 3DS, mainly because it's a new storyline !and it's actually pretty good!) Oh yeah? You wanna bet? (just kidding, you'd definitely beat me. I'm not that good. Or am I... ) Are you the kind of person that would get the perfect EV's and IV's for your pokemon?

That's interesting. I think I would like that more than the last season. Tsk tsk, another show on your list!

To be fair this really hasn't been the best year for movies. A lot of disappointments I think. Have you not seen BVS yet? What did you think of Man of Steel?

Yes! I'm glad you haven't been spoiled. It's definitely part of some emotional moments and I'm glad I didn't know about it before seeing the movie. I'm glad to hear school seems to be going well! Laid back teachers are great. I've got one really laid back teacher, and this one really, really excitable, passionate Russian prof for a physics class that already feels pretty overwhelming. Ahh well. I'll also be a teaching assistant for some low level physics so that should be fun. My brother was telling me about an astronomy course he's in for arts students, and they had to answer a multiple choice question about how many stars were in the Solar System. Most people answered "an uncountable amount" . Oh and apparently the Earth takes 24 hours to go around the Sun, not a year.

I'm in the exact same situation. I played Pokemon Go for a few days and then got bored and uninstalled it. If it didn't have Pokemon aspect it wouldn't be nearly as popular, which kind of tells you how good a game it really is. There isn't any interesting combat or pokemon training, leveling, and evolving aspect either. Nice! I've been going back to play through Omega Ruby.

Yeah, it'll be delicate bringing her back, and they can't drag it out too long because I think it's pretty clear she'll be back. That's true about the investigation. Maybe they found some way to hide them. Either way I'm interested in what their fates were. That's an interesting theory about Will! I'd definitely like to see more of the Upside Down than we did in season 1. I'm betting the Sheriff will turn on his government deal at some point.

Your list must be getting really long now!

Oh it was very cheesy . Bones got a lot more screen time. They focused a lot more on emphasizing the relationships between Kirk, Spock, and Bones like in the original series, and I really appreciated they did that! They also did something for Leonard during the movie that I won't spoil.

How has school been so far? You're now about a week into classes, right? My first day back is tomorrow.

Definitely wouldn't mind him replacing her. Thanks . The CW Superman definitely looks awkward in that photo, but I think it was just a weird photo. He looks alright in set photos. Yeah I'm not sure if I'll be getting to Legends anytime soon. Ahh well, there are lots of great shows to look forward to this fall and I'm eager to have them back.

Stranger Things definitely got better in the second half. I still wouldn't say I loved it in the end but it was enough for me to want to watch the second season.

Dustin was the most likeable of the trio for sure. He was probably my favourite character as well. I'm sure we'll see Eleven again considering the sheriff left the Eggo waffles in the forest. I wonder what the government agency has in store for later because of their deal. And what about other psychic kids, like assumedly numbers One to Ten? Well, Barb was not much more than monster fodder. I wonder why Will isn't telling anyone about throwing up those worms (and why the hospital didn't pick it up when they would have checked him over, though that's probably more of a nit-pick than something to do with the plot). Is it just that he doesn't want to worry his mom, or is the worm taking over his mind in some way?

That's awesome!

I finally got around to watching the new Star Trek movie (my brother wanted to me to wait to watch it together). Went with my dad too and we all loved it. It was messy at parts, and like the other two movies, most of it was non-stop action with some kind of ridiculous solutions to problems - but it had a some really nostalgic and emotional moments that made it a fitting 50th anniversary movie. I agree with a lot of reviewers in that it felt more like classic Trek than the other movies. It focused on the characters and their relationships more, and them working together after being abandoned on an alien world. It was sad seeing Anton Yelchin on screen though, and the movie was dedicated to him as well as in memory of Leonard Nimoy.